February 26 @ 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm

Professor Robin May
Professor of Infectious Diseases and Director,
Institute of Microbiology & Infection, University of Birmingham

Abstract
My group are interested in host-pathogen interactions and, in particular, in understanding how some fungal pathogens are able to subvert phagocyte behaviours. In this talk I will discuss our recent work in probing the cryptococcal/macrophage interaction. On the “host side”, I will discuss what we have learned about the molecular basis of “vomocytosis”: a poorly-understood process that phagocytes use to expel resistant pathogens which appears to be strongly modulated by inflammatory signals. From the “pathogen side” I will talk about our recent discovery of ‘long-range virulence control’ in Cryptococci, and what this might mean for our understanding of disease pathogenesis in patients.

Bio
I am Professor of Infectious Diseases and Director of the Institute of Microbiology & Infection at the University of Birmingham, UK. I originally trained in Plant Sciences (University of Oxford) followed by a PhD on mammalian cell biology with Prof Laura Machesky. After a Human Frontier Science Program postdoctoral fellowship with Prof Ronald Plasterk at the University of Utrecht, The Netherlands, I established my own group at the University of Birmingham in 2005. My research interests focus on host-pathogen interactions and, in particular in understanding how some pathogens are able to subvert the innate immune system, with the ultimate aim of improving the treatment or prevention of opportunistic infections in patients with impaired immunity.